Dust
by RachaelAislynn
Summary: This isn't a story about treasure hunters or Hyperion overlords. It only really has two characters. Two friends. Clayten and Carlyle. An inseparable crew of bandits hiding out in the deserts of Pandora...


The soft glow of tobacco embers illuminate the painted and pierced face of the scrawny raider. With care, he loads glass and barbed steel buckshot into his rusty but trusty Jakobs shotgun. "Carlyle. See anything?" Clayten calls to his long time partner. "Gettin hungry as fuck."

She turned from the maginfied scope on her SMG and looked at Clayten with a small grin. "A small supply convoy. One of those shitty catch-a-ride buggies behind a dumptruck with a few crates... looks like Theodore weapon. Crates..." She hopped down from her perch on a boulder and sauntered over to his on the hood of their own 'shitty catch-a-ride buggy' and sighed. "We gonna take it?"

"What kinda question is that?" He gave her a sly malevolent grin and continued, "close range or pick'em off? We got those two sniper rifles from the last pair of vault hunters." He motioned his head to the weapons crate in the back of their buggy. "Choice is yours this time, Lyle. I picked last."

"I wanna blow shit up." She looked back at the convoy, just dots in the distance, "Wanna drive or run the gun?"

"I'll drive." He hopped up from his spot and jumped into the drivers seat.

She swung herself up into the turret seat, and smiled as she gripped the cold metal of the triggers with both hands, "Let's fuck 'em up!" She shouted.

When they entered shooting range, Carlyle opened fire, pelting the other buggy with both the built in RPG launcher. She started laughing when the buggy exploded and ducked a piece of flaming debris. She stopped firing and shouted down to Clayten, "Hey! Get me close to the cabin! I'm gonna take the truck!"

Clayten swerved hard around the tumbling husk of a buggy Carlyle had made and inched closer to the truck, doing his best to keep steady on the rough terrain. "Cockpit's all yours! Let's earn our keep!"

She grinned that wide smile of hers and launched herself from the buggy and onto the door of the cabin. She drew her revolver and hit the window with the butt of it. The window exploded, sending the citizens inside into a panic. She aimed her pistol at them and ended them both with a bullet to the brain. With a sigh, she climbed in through the window and took control of the truck.

Clayten pulled in front of the truck and flashed the rear lights signaling her to follow. He raised a fist in the air, his sign for 'nicely done'.

Carlyle smiled again and followed her partner. As the distance to their destination grew shorter, Carlyle grew more grim, the adrenaline long since vanished from her veins, and she gripped the wheel of the truck so tightly that her knuckles turned white. A sudden surge of pain hit her and, looking down, she realized that something hot and wet had plastered her shirt to her abdomen. She was bleeding, so she pressed her hand to her wound. She would wait until they got back to their camp to fix herself up, and would purposely neglect to tell Clayten.

Clayten pulled into a shallow canyon and between two marker rocks to their subterranean garage base. The abandoned Dahl garage was covered up by a landslide, but was unearthed by a rival band of raiders that he and Carlyle made short work of not a month earlier. He pulled the buggy into the repair bay and hopped out, grabbing a heavy wrench axe to pry open the cargo in the back. "Let's pop this shit open, Carlyle!" he pounded the wrench side of the weapon on the cockpit door.

Carlyle looked down at him, the color already almost completely gone from her face, "Y-yeah. I'll be there in a second..." She smiled weakly and opened the door with a grunt, making sure not to hit Clayten.

Clayten shrugged and happily danced his way to the crate swinging the axe around with him before slamming it into the containers lock and chain. With a grunt and somewhat maniacal laugh he continued to chop away at the mechanism.

Carlyle lowered herself from the cabin, wincing in pain. She felt dizzy from the pain and blood loss, but tried her best to ignore it. She went around to where Clayten was and pulled out her hacksaw, working with him to open the crate.

"Whoa, whoa now..." Clayten leaned the axe up against the wheel of the cargo container. "Looks like you took one. No fun for you til you're sewn up." Clayten grabbed her wrist holding the saw and gave her a stern and concerned look. He may have been a murderous maniac, but she was his only friend in this god forsaken planet and he wasn't going to lose her so easily. "Back room. I'll get the doctor bag."

She sighed and looked at him. "Fine..." she inhaled sharply as she put the saw down on top of the crate, grimacing, and then pressed her hand back against her side. "Wanna help me get there? My legs are numb."

"Yeah, yeah. Hold onto your guts." he scooped her up in his arms and carried her in back, singing a tune in poorly pronounced french, the same song he'd sing when butchering skag for meat when money was tight. "I'll sew you up pretty as a pendulum, Carlyle." He set her down on the counter and rummaged around for the bag. "Ready for the fun?" He snapped on a pair of medical gloves and a mask.

She snickered softly, "Yeah. Just... no salt, this time. If I see so much as one grain, I will fucking kill you."

"That's what the lemon juice is for!" Clayten gave a mean grin under his mask but began his meticulous work. "blow torch..." the blue gas flame kicked on and he began heating some of his tools. "We drank all the disinfecting fluid, remember?" Cutting away at her top he saw what hit her. "Part of that buggy you blew up, bit back. Easy fix."

"Alright," she said quietly, moving her shirt up to look at the wound. "Fuck," she said, gently lowering her shirt back over the wound in her side.

"You might want to bite down on this." Clayten handed her a folded up skag leather belt. "No pain killers... 'cause this shit's gonna hurt."

She nodded and put the belt in her mouth, holding it in place with her teeth.

He nodded to her and dug a slim tool into the wound to hook and pull the shard of twisted metal from her side. "Almost clipped a vessel. You lucky it didn't, woulda died in the truck." the metal sliver came free and was sticky with clotted blood. Clayten dangled it before her face before setting it in her hand. "Souvenir."

She closed her hand around the bloody object and took a deep breath through her nose.

Clayten turned around, pouring a shot of tequila for Carlyle and placing it on the table before dousing the wound with the cheap alcohol. "Arighty then!" he picked up a needle and started sewing the wound shut with a thin gauge wire. Once closed, the applied a burning orange hot piece of metal to the wound, sealing it up. "Won't be pretty, but it'll beat infection." He left the bottle of tequila on the counter. "Best painkiller we got."

Carlyle took the belt out of her mouth and tossed it onto the table, "Thanks, Clayten." She muttered, her hand still clutching the piece of debris.

"I can get the salt if you like." he snapped off the gloves. "and you're welcome"

She nodded and didn't touch the tequila. She only stood slowly and started to walk from the room. "I'm tired. I'll see ya tomorrow."

"We'll pop the loot in the morning."

"Alright." She exited the room and went to her own room. She changed out of her bloody clothes and then sat on her cot. She sighed and ran her fingers through her short black hair.

"Nothing's ever easy is it." Clayten sighed and cleaned up the kitchen/operating room with meticulous fervor before returning to his hammock in the garage. "One, two, three..." he started counting aloud as he stripped down his shotgun to the individual parts. "one, two, three..." as he reassembled it with almost instinctive accuracy. These actions were repeated countless times until he dozed off with a half completed shotgun in his hammock.


End file.
